by Selva. Published on 16 July 2007: Whitby, a seaside town in North Yorkshire, is home to Dracula's cave, gothic gulls, and a B&B establishment that charms its guests with a roaring toilet the size of a matchbox, and a suicidal room heater that is colder than CERN's cryogenic systems. To this town, we - I and my wife Ramya - were headed for a vacation. Read on or listen to the audio.

The Moors
The sight of a Bed & Breakfast establishment sends me into a reverie these days: I acquired this rather pathetic habit of looking at large and well proportioned toilets lovingly after a recent vacation in a Yorkshire coastal town called Whitby. Introduction to Whitby came by the way of my sister and her husband who used to live and work here. Whitby lies to the north-east of London, a distance of about 250 miles. The town is at the mouth of river Esk that drains into the North Sea.

As we neared Whitby, we drove through the Moors National Park, a brazenly weird landscape; like the high altitude salt basins of Atacama Desert in the South American Andes, the Moors is a geological bastard child, abandoned by the sea a long time ago and sent upwards by earth's unsentimental processes. The higher Moors are made of sandstone and consequently are allergic to water. They would not give easy passage to water, making it almost impossible for most plants to survive. The water-resistant sandstone substrate coupled with high rainfall is a perfect setting for some spectacularly ugly plants to stake their claim. The moors are covered with heather, a survivor among shrubs that lives up to its scientific name of Calluna vulgaris.[Wikipedia informs [2] us that the generic name Calluna is derived from a Greek word meaning 'to sweep', as the plant was used to make brooms, the specific name vulgaris is derived from a Latin word for 'common'. Indeed, a suitable name.] Seasonally, the plant turns purple, but is normally a shade of brown; if seen in isolation a brown heather may induce puking, but in the Moors it spreads out on a such vast scale with a backdrop of glacial valleys that instead of puking it evokes a primordial fascination in the minds of mammals like me. The Whitby Abbey was visible on the hill miles away, projecting its ruined remains into the sky like a rotting sequoia wagging its bony fingers in historic indignation at the remorseless dull sky. Melancholy made an appearence in my mind at the sight of this skeletal splendour. I imagined people in the Cathedral fleeing in fear as they were hacked to death by the Vikings many centuries ago.

A charmed room
We reached Whitby in the afternoon and entered the B&B that my sister had reffered us to. It was run by a Spaniard named Carlos who had conquered Whitby many decades earlier by marrying an english woman called Mary. Mary runs the B&B, manages household affairs, and takes care of Carlos. Carlos, meanwhile, feels incredibly lucky and busies himself with many glasses of spirits arranged according to their ranks on the bar table. As we entered, he held a glass high and cheered.

Carlos is 55 and has reasons to celebrate. A year ago he was unable to move because of a paralyzing stroke. My brother-in-law, who then worked as his physical therapist, got him back on his feet. We thought we would get a discount stay at Carlos's B&B by congratulating him on his recovery and letting him know how our brother-in-law talks incessantly about his favorite patient.

After a drink, I picked up the keys for our room from Mary. "We serve bacon and egg in the morning. Six to eight", she said.

I dragged the luggage on the steps while Ramya walked up behind me, alert and ready to dodge any tumbling luggage. Half way up the stairs, around a corner, we were confronted by Darkness which sniffed our toes menacingly like a mangy street dog. I pulled back and took out my gun. I exaggerate, of course, but if I had a gun it would be smoking now, and you would see a carnage of wounded blackness swiftly retreating over the walls.

It took a few minutes for us to accustom to the dark. A faint ray of hope and light was seeping out from inside a cracked door at the end of the tunnel. "It's the room at the end of the corridor. It's lit", Mary yelled from below making our hearts skip a beat. Apparently, we were the only guests that night. I proceeded cautiously to the doors of our room and tentatively pushed it open. The room was lit by a five watts bulb that dimmed perceptibly on our entry. I flicked the switch a few times to wake the bulb up and went through anticipation, angst, joy, bafflement and joy again in rapid succession as the bulb blinked, dimmed, brightened, crackled audibly and then lit itself up brightly. The room was of modest proportions - 8x8x7 feet in size and depth - with enough room around corners of the bed to allow an underfed B&B mouse to enter and exit comfortably. A large mirror with a gothic wooden frame painted in yellow stared at us from the wall at the end of the bed while a tiny wash basin grinned from below the mirror.

I was hoping for some afternoon sex but the cold was severe. My manhood was in hiding and all the testosterone seemed to have solidified. Ramya anticipated my mood and attempted to close the doors completely without much success. The door was still slightly cracked after locking. I suppose we'd have to hang a towel over it if I get lucky.

An old room heater from the Georgian era sat near the door with a suicidal expression. It looked like a stoic monk who had had enough of the world and was attempting to voluntarily stop his heart. I was overcome by empathy that I went over and laid a comforting hand on it only to be stung by freezing metal: my whole body shuddered as I wrung my hand from the mouth of that icy hell. Ramya gave me a horrified look and dragged the bed far away from the heater. "I suppose Mary forgot to switch it on", I muttered. Recently, I am told, scientists and engineers in CERN, the European lab for smashing Swiss watches,[Feynman, the Nobel prize winning physicist once said that smashing sub-atomic particles in particle accelerators was like trying to figure out a pocket watch by smashing two of them together and watching the pieces fly out. CERN's website [3] declares that its is the coolest place in the Universe. At minus 271°C, it is, in fact, cooler than outer space.] cooled the magnets of the new watch smasher to somewhere around minus 270 degrees, spending millions of euros in the process. Clearly, they are unaware of a device that is colder than their magnets, and it was cooled with forgetfulness instead of a million euros of public money. There's a lesson or two for CERN here in Whitby.

Toilet in a box
Ramya opened the bathroom door and gasped in alarm. The image of a snake in the toilet bowl mysteriously appeared in my mind.[Well, nothing is really mysterious in this world. Back in Namakkal, on a summer day, I found a snake in the toilet bowl. Apparently, it had crawled through the window and had taken refuge from summer heat in the cool underside of the bowl. You say it's unbelievable, impossible. I agree. That's why I never mentioned it to anyone at home. Although, I think I did suggest to my folks that perhaps we should use the other toilet more often. Today, in Whitby, it all came back to my mind. I was swimming in adrenaline by now.] I heroically jumped over the bed to fight the intruder and save my wife. As I punched and kicked the air with my eyes shut, Ramya held me back and pointed inside the toilet. We both peered in and instead of a snake I saw a tiny cupboard fitted with a tinier potty. It was my turn to gasp. A microscopic shower hung right over the potty and gave us a cheerful wink.

"How do I shi...fit in there?", asked Ramya barely coherent and shaking with feelings of genteel rage.

"I think you get in there backwards and plop yourself over the potty"

"But I can't close the toilet door! It'll knock on my knees!"

"Oh..", I started having uneasy thoughts accompanied by sensational precursors to an urgent bowel movement.

Ramya tested the flush. It roared like a motorbike sans silencer they show on those silly TV programs.[Instead of names like "Hot Rod", the shows could be more appropriately named. Say, "Copulating with a Bike and Feeling like a Man".] We both instinctively jumped away from the toilet door and onto the bed. Our Kangaroo genes[These genes gets activated if you jump often, like how the Giraffe genes in your neck get activated if you are a short person watching a movie in a theatre of long persons.] were being activated.

"I need to go", I said and clumsily moved backwards into the toilet.

"Wait!", Ramya cried and started plugging her ears with wads of cotton.

Time for a stroll
By the time I came out of the toilet my arms were bending in multiple directions and my left leg was attached to the right shoulder. Modernity has installed a flush on the first floor but has forgotten to provide a proper setting to poo. A proper setting is what I had my native village [Odakkadu (Tamil word meaning "a field of limestones"), Vazhavandi Village, Mohanur Taluk, Tamilnadu, India] in South India. Back there, dumping is a delightful experience. I would walk with a water mug in one hand, neem toothbrush in the other, nothing on the body except a towel wrapped over my crotch (with urgent subliminal messages to the glands not to indulge in an erection), and a melody in my mouth. I would eject matter with great gusto, accompanied by flatulence that - pardon me for being truthful here - would eerily sound like Scottish Bagpipes in concert. An outdoor toilet amidst the entertaining company of dung beetles and occasional fellow toileteers who would tactfully avoid eye contact! A setting to relieve all the tensions of mind and body!

I dreamt of dung beetles as I tightly curled over a square inch of the bed and tried to warm it. Ramya shook me and asked me to get ready. "Let's go out and explore Whitby", she said. It was 4 PM.

On our way down I asked Mary if the room heating would be switched on.

"We switch it on by half past three", she said absentmindedly. I looked at the clock on the wall showing 4 PM and looked at her with my eyes pregnant with implied meanings. She was tired and had her mind elsewhere. My pathetic attempts at subtleties were understandably ignored.

"Have a good evening", she said as she went away to check on her favorite Spaniard.

The sky was dull grey, clouds with full bladders sat glumly over Whitby like kids in the classroom waiting for the bell to ring, a few young clouds couldn't wait and drizzled the typical english piss of a rain that can send even a rock insane.

A forlorn Herring Gull was perched over the cross atop the nearby cathedral. It looked at us as if we were rotten fish unfit for its delicate palate and gave a derisive cry. I looked up my little tourist book on Translation of Whitby Gull Cries which translated the gull's cry thus: "You suck", and added, "Now, move on."

We ambled along the road that ran parallel to the sea over the cliff, passed the famous whalebone arch, and descended down to the shops at the pier. Through the fog I could see vague shapes of ships anchored off the coast. Teenage kids were perched on the lower deck of the pier throwing fishing hooks into the sea. The tide was low revealing the mossy underarms of the pier. Lost fishing hooks glinted like pearls from the floor of the shallow seabed, greatly seducing greedy tourists who wondered if they were coins. A few extremely brave and extremely stupid men were wading into the icy waters of North sea on the shore, waving gallantly to their nervous spouses while their balls and bottoms went brittle and shattered in the waves.

A signboard on the pavement braved people to enter Dracula's cave: another of Whitby's claim to gothic fame besides the Abbey and the cemetery obsessed St Mary's church. The writer Bram Stoker[You can read his stories here [4]] drew inspiration for his Dracula stories during his stay in Whitby. Apparently, he gathered the story of a Russian ship Demetrius that jettisoned its cargo of non-empty coffins near Whitby coast. For many days after Demetrius's dumped its cargo, corpses in various states of decomposition washed up on Whitby shores. Nothing can be more horror inducing than looking at the ruins of Whitby Abbey while surrounded by rotting corpses. Thus inspired, Bram Stoker uses this event almost as it happened in Dracula novel: Dracula travels in a ship named Demeter. When the ship crashes on Whitby shores in a storm Dracula leaps onto land in the form of a wolf and takes abode in a cave. The signboard was evidently cashing-in on this piece of history. On the showcase of a nearby gift shop an artful piece of turd posed bravely as Dracula.

Fish, Chips and tasty eyeballs
Fish and Chips was in the air. Our noses negotiated an agreement with our legs and led our bodies to the Magpie Cafe, a popular place in Whitby for fish and chips; so popular that people habitually queued outside - even when they weren't buying any fish. Incidentally, the English chips is not wafers of fried potatoes but thick finger-like potato fries: a potential source of great bafflement for the millions of oversized McDonald lovers worldwide.

Fish and Chips is sold in paper containers that are shaped like pirate boats with their sails broken. The floor of the container is filled with chips, battered fried fish is placed over it, and a choice of sauce is poured over the fish to mask imperfections; a tiny wooden fork is supplied along to inconvenience you. I poked at the chips and fish with the fork for a while only to finally give up. I threw the fork in the direction of Magpie Cafe and started piling the fish and chips into my mouth with my capable fingers.

We went and sat on walls of the large viewing platform. I looked up and saw ponies that looked more like sheeps than horses grazing in the lawn of St Mary's church over the hill. To the right of the church stood the ruins of Whitby Abbey. The Abbey, Whitby's claim to fame, was built in 657 AD. The Vikings came in 867 and destroyed it to install their brand of religion over christianity. After the Vikings wound down (they married locally and many became christians, silly men), the Abbey was rebuilt in 1078. Around 1540 Henry VIII came along and dissolved the monastery in Whitby, which lead to the eventual plundering and collapse of the Abbey. What remains now is a structure that bears witness to a horrendous past, like the skeleton of an ancient warrior whose limbs and bones show signs of violent blows.

The tide was rising to the relief of the tourists who were looking disapprovingly at the mossy underarms of the pier through their cameras. A gull hopped over to me and pecked at the battered fish while I watched a local school band setup their wares to perform under the central podium. The gull was enormous with blood-stained beak and menacing claws: it's passive aggression gave clear indication that it would not hesitate to spill my entrails on the slightest sign of insubordination. I placed Fish and Chips at the Great Clawed Feet and walked away ushering Ramya not to look back.

The band began their performance of a merry song that cheered everyone up, including the clouds, which immediately began their performance of 'Singin in the Rain'. Everyone who stood to watch the band took cover. The band continued playing for the many gulls that were now perched on the instrument stands. Great Clawed Feet had lost my offering to the rain. He was looking closely at the band members for some plump flesh and good saucy eyes to go with it. A young kid in the band accidentally caught the piercing gaze of Great Clawed Feet's, realized why it was gazing at his eyes, and started screaming.

By the time we returned, it was dark, the wind was howling making rain drops twist around in confusion. The B&B door was locked. After a few tentative knocks, I started unscrewing the hinges of the door when Carlos wandered by into the corridor. He looked at us standing outside in the rain like the ghosts from the Abbey and started retreating. I signaled that we would like to be let in, and, with my hands and mouth, launched into a comprehensive and deeply erudite overview of the economic system by which he lodges us and provides us food in return for payment which we make using loaned money through an international credit system. Before I could get into how he was contractually bound to let us in, he let us in. I don't think he understood my elaborate signs. He probably thought I was going crazy in the cold, which Ramya informed me later in the room, was closer to truth than anything else.

"Drink, Senor?", Carlos enquired as we wobbled in.

"No, thank you. We had quite a lot to..."

Carlos was already at the counter pouring himself a second glass.

END.